BusinessWire: Friends of Lincoln Collection Launches New Website (PRESS RELEASE). “Friends of the Lincoln Collection of Indiana, Inc., has launched a new website serving as a gateway to thousands of digitized Lincoln era letters, photographs, newspapers, books and other items from the Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection. Also, it will soon post searchable archives from the 1,900+ issues of Lincoln Lore. First published in 1929, Lincoln Lore is a nationally recognized magazine for scholarly articles, interviews, book reviews, and announcements of local and national Lincoln-related programs and events. The resource, currently published four times a year, is intended for scholars, teachers and students of all ages.” I wasn’t going to confirm that the site was about Abraham Lincoln, but then I thought that SOMEBODY out there might think it was about Lincoln Logs… so yeah, this is about Abraham Lincoln.

NASA: NASA, University of Texas at Dallas Reveal Apollo 11 Behind-the-Scenes Audio. “NASA’s Johnson Space Center has the only functional remaining tape recorder capable of playing those approximately 170 remaining tapes. But the time and effort of converting them to current digital formats was daunting, and required the tape deck to be modified from being able to handle two-channels at a time to handle the 30 channels on the historic tapes. But through a collaborative effort with The University of Texas at Dallas (UT Dallas), the conversion finally has been completed, and the unique perspective of those at the core of supporting humankind’s ‘giant leap’ is available to download and listen to all 19,000 hours of audio recordings.” This is an incredible achievement. I posted in December about what it took behind the scenes to get this digitizing done.

FiveThirtyEight: Why We’re Sharing 3 Million Russian Troll Tweets. “FiveThirtyEight has obtained nearly 3 million tweets from accounts associated with the Internet Research Agency. To our knowledge, it’s the fullest empirical record to date of Russian trolls’ actions on social media, showing a relentless and systematic onslaught. In concert with the researchers who first pulled the tweets, FiveThirtyEight is uploading them to GitHub so that others can explore the data for themselves.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Mashable: Facebook cuts off access to user data for ‘hundreds of thousands’ of apps. “Facebook has just blocked a truckload of apps from accessing its user’s data. Facebook’s VP of Product Partnerships, Ime Archibong, explained in a blog post Tuesday that Facebook had cut off API access for ‘hundreds of thousands of inactive apps that have not submitted for our app review process.’ That’s a lot of random, dormant apps that had access.”

Google Blog: Making it easier to discover data in Search. “Based on feedback from 30 of the top data journalists in the world, we identified an opportunity to improve how tabular data appears in Google Search and in doing so make it easier for all people to find the data they’re looking for. It works like this: news organizations that publish data in the form of tables can add additional structured data to make the dataset parts of the page easier to identify for use in relevant Search features. One of the participants, ProPublica has been testing the structured data on its interactive databases (for example, on its Non-profits Explorer).”

USEFUL STUFF

ProBlogger: Everything You Need to Know About Inserting and Editing Images in WordPress. “While there’s no absolute rule that bloggers need to include images, most bloggers will include at least one eye-catching image in each post (normally at or very near the start). However, it’s easy to make mistakes with images. We’ve already covered how to obtain images legally so you don’t accidentally infringe on someone’s copyright. But in today’s post, I want to go through the process of uploading and inserting images.”

MakeTechEasier: How Other Search Engines Compare to Google. “There’s only one search engine that’s managed to become a dictionary-recognized verb — even Microsoft admitted defeat in its campaign to get people to ‘Bing’ things. It’s generally accepted that if you need to find something on the Internet, you go to Google. But have you tried the other options? Sure, Bing didn’t get into the Oxford English Dictionary, but it’s still around, along with a few other Google competitors that promise everything from better layouts to more privacy.” Deep dive.

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

New York Times: News From Your Neighborhood, Brought to You by the State of New Jersey . “The state’s lawmakers have embarked on a novel experiment to address a local news crisis: putting up millions of dollars in the state’s most recent budget to pay for community journalism. While public television and radio stations have long received government funds, new media experts like Kelly McBride of the Poynter Institute say they have not heard of any other efforts on this scale, with a state helping to pay for reporting projects among a range of news media, including for-profit outlets.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CNET: HP will pay hackers up to $10,000 to break its printers. “HP isn’t asking people to smash its printers to pieces, but the company is willing to pay people to break its software apart. On Tuesday, HP announced its first bug bounty program that specifically targets its printers, offering as much as $10,000 to hackers who can find vulnerabilities on its machines.”

Engadget: Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica woes continue with UK lawsuits. “Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica troubles are far from over and a new class action lawsuit over the scandal might be on the way. Wired reports today that a group of UK residents has sent the company a letter before claim, in which they highlight the many instances where the social media giant failed to protect its users’ privacy and demand answers to a list of questions. Represented by UK-based law firm Irvine Thanvi Natas Solicitors, the UK residents all had their data obtained by Cambridge Analytica, and their attorney says that if their questions aren’t answered within 14 days, legal action could be taken.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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